Midi out

I’ve got access to an external MIDI tone generator. SDL seems to only
support timidity output, which sounds good, but not great.

For instance,

- playmidi sounds crap (OPL3 on my $10 soundcard)
- timidity sounds good (software wavetable)
- playmidi -e sounds WOW (professional tonegen on midiout)

Is anybody working on supporting real MIDI in SDL_mixer? MIDI out, of
course: cheap FM synth is grossly inferior to timidity.

I see from the archives this has been asked before, but I’ve not seen
any followups and I’d like to know how far it got.

I’ve got access to an external MIDI tone generator. SDL seems to only
support timidity output, which sounds good, but not great.

For instance,

- playmidi sounds crap (OPL3 on my $10 soundcard)
- timidity sounds good (software wavetable)
- playmidi -e sounds WOW (professional tonegen on midiout)

Is anybody working on supporting real MIDI in SDL_mixer? MIDI out, of
course: cheap FM synth is grossly inferior to timidity.

I see from the archives this has been asked before, but I’ve not seen
any followups and I’d like to know how far it got.

Just to add my two bits (which of course will be ignored :slight_smile:
This WOULD be nice to see. I’d be quite happy to see MIDI record too -
but I suspect recording audio is a long ways from anyone’s minds…

(sitting in front of my largely useless MIDI keyboard as beyond playmidi I
have yet to find -any- applications that work with it - and I’m
interested in using it to edit music :slight_smile:

hrm - MIDI-out -playback- is definitely ontopic for SDL. I somehow
suspect that MIDI record isn’t - so if anyone’s got any comments, personal
email please :slight_smile:
(I mean I’d -like- to see duplex audio for SDL as well - but the last time
I tried it using anything other than /dev/dsp, my system crashed… about
the only time I’ve seen a “panic” since working with 3dfx driver :slight_smile:
-> it’s because of this I shelved video/audioconferencing for now…

G’day, eh? :slight_smile:
- TeunisOn Fri, 13 Apr 2001, Nathan Hand wrote:

- playmidi sounds crap (OPL3 on my $10 soundcard)
- timidity sounds good (software wavetable)
- playmidi -e sounds WOW (professional tonegen on midiout)

For the sake of clarification, is playing through an on-card hardware
wavetable covered in the options above?

I think this is what playmidi is supposed to do, but when I try to use it
with my SB Live (which has an obscenely nice wavetable in it) it sounds
like an Adlib.

In order to get any decent sound, I have to use timidity’s software
wavetable emulation, which, while a darn sight better sounding then what I
was getting, is still not up to the quality I’m used to experiencing from
my card.

Cheers,
-Josh Emmons

I see from the archives this has been asked before, but I’ve not seen
any followups and I’d like to know how far it got.

That’s pretty much it. Several people have started working on native
MIDI support for SDL_mixer, but I don’t think anybody has finished it.

See ya,
-Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer, Loki Entertainment Software

You’re SOL as far as the SB Live goes - there is really beta software to support he sequencer for MIDI out, but there are no plans to support the on board wavetable. If you have a spare ISA slot, the AWE 64 series had very nice wavetable and good support.

Ross Vandegrift
coolio at tmbg.org
@Ross_Vandegrift> For the sake of clarification, is playing through an on-card hardware

wavetable covered in the options above?

I think this is what playmidi is supposed to do, but when I try to use it
with my SB Live (which has an obscenely nice wavetable in it) it sounds
like an Adlib.

In order to get any decent sound, I have to use timidity’s software
wavetable emulation, which, while a darn sight better sounding then what I
was getting, is still not up to the quality I’m used to experiencing from
my card.